Support Your Friendly Farmer

With the blossoming awareness of sustainability, local economies and fair trade practices, we are committed to sourcing the highest quality as well as the most ethically and ecologically produced products we can find. That includes a number of fair trade companies working in India, Thailand and Vietnam; several manufacturers who cut and sew their bamboo and organic cotton clothing here in the US; and a variety of chocolatiers, candle makers, seamstresses and herbalists all based right here in SLO County.

But we still get a lot of concerned customers asking, "When are we going to start growing the bamboo here in the states?" Well, that's a good question, because that's an awfully appealing idea, at least in theory. It could, after all, be an important step in getting off our oil dependency and the reliance on Chinese imports.

As much as we strive to eliminate our carbon footprints and environmental impacts, there are limits. We can reduce and minimize, but there are no consumer products with zero impact. Even if you grow all your own organic produce and make your own clothing with a solar-powered sewing machine, you'll still need to haul methane-rich manure in from somewhere, and get your new sewing needles, threads and fabrics from somewhere.

In this six billion man village, our survival depends on specialization, and specialization means commerce. We can encourage as much local trade as possible, but we cannot eliminate international commerce. The fair trade movement, for example, fosters socially responsible trade with the third world, recognizing that we need to eliminate inhumane business practices without completely severing ties with our trading partners around the globe.

As much as we love to support our local farmers, most varieties of bamboo are native to Asia. Of the 1500+ species, only two or three are native to North America. Moso bamboo (Phyllostachys pubescens), the variety most commonly harvested for commercial use — for clothing, flooring and kitchen wares — is native to China and Japan. And while it may grow well in gardens of California and the Pacific Northwest, introducing it to the U.S. on a massive agricultural scale could bring all kinds of unforeseeable ecological problems.

The beauty of bamboo, as a natural resource, resides in its tenacious growth habit without need of irrigation or fertilizers, and its resilience against pests — in sharp contrast to cotton, it requires no pesticides or herbicides. These wonderful benefits are seen in bamboo's natural habitat. But transplanted to someplace like the San Joaquin Valley, intensive irrigation would become necessary, and who know what sort of pest and disease issues might crop up.

Does this mean we should abandon the idea altogether? Not necessarily, but extensive consideration and research will be needed. Just remember the rabbits in Australia. And yes, in the right (or wrong?) conditions, bamboo spreads just as fast as bunnies.

Stay tuned for further stories on the unexpected outcomes of bamboo ecology . . .

Sustainable Ag and the Trouble with Monoculture

With deep gratitude to the investigative journalism of Michael Pollan and to the burgeoning intrusion of natural fiber alternatives into the fashion industry, the general public is growing increasingly aware of the need for a revival of sustainable agriculture. In a climate of concern and sometimes desperation, buzzwords like green, organic and sustainable may be cast into the breeze like so many granules of pollen, but they mean little without a proper context for understanding the roots of this thorny issue. Agronomy is not a subject to be mastered overnight, but one to be studied over the seasons of a lifetime. For now let's consider the modern method of monocropping.

In the past 80 years or so, the art and science of agriculture has undergone an astonishing transformation in order to keep up with the hyperbolic rate of world population growth. The need to extract an ever-growing quantity of produce — whether for food, fuel or fiber — from a planet of limited resources has required a massive wave of innovation among an ever-shrinking number of increasingly specialized farmers. The capacity of these mega-farms to meet the demand of global consumption with sufficient supply and minimal prices represents a genuine triumph of modern civilization. But (you knew there'd be a but, right?), at what cost?

One of the key components of this hyper-efficient system of modern farming involves the technique of cultivation called monoculture, growing huge areas of a single crop, such as the millions of acres in and around Iowa farmed exclusively for corn. If you visit almost any major farm in the world, you will see this technique in practice, row after identical row of crop X, bred to perfect uniformity and invariable mediocrity. The tidy, geometric rows may bear a certain appeal to the post-industrial, minimalist sense of aesthetic, but the impact on both the farmland and the finished product can be detrimental.

In the old days of subsistence farming, a family would plant variegated rows of roots, tubers and vegetables to ensure themselves a diverse diet come harvest time. But because each crop has its own soil nutrient and water needs, not to mention pruning and harvesting methods, this method of "polyculture" is certainly not the most efficient for large scale production. On the other hand, it does tend to yield a more nutritious and full flavored product with minimal pest and disease issues.

These are the chief problems we can associate with monocropping. When thousand of acres of broccoli or cotton, for example, are cultivated en masse, they are guaranteed to deplete the soil of those specific nutrients that broccoli or cotton use most. Industrial agriculture addresses this issue with the heavy application of chemical fertilizers. Residue and run-off from these petrochemical fertilizers has been demonstrated to be potentially harmful to both the habitat and the end consumer.

Secondly, monocropping results in the crop's severe vulnerability to pests and diseases. An unnaturally high concentration of a given plant is sure to attract and support an unnaturally high number of whichever pests thrive on that plant, while their natural predators will remain absent or ineffective. Likewise, a plant-specific disease could spread like the plague across the exposed acreage of monoculture. Again, these man-made challenges are overcome with manmade solutions, i.e. the heavy application of pesticides and insecticides, with whose risks we are already familiar, those which chemical companies like Monsanto fervently deny.

How to draw the greatest efficiency out of a plant without chemically-intensive monocropping is a leading concern among organic farmers. Many have simply resorted to the use of more natural and organic fertilizers, animal-derived but industrially produced. But we might also look to nature for her solutions.

Unlike cotton and broccoli, there are a number of plants that actually thrive in monoculture conditions. Take the giant redwood, for example. They can stand alone, with reasonable success, in parks and gardens up and down the west coast, but only in vast swaths do they truly thrive. In their native habitat, these evergreen macro-organisms generate a climate of their own, attracting storm systems to satisfy their unquenchable thirst, while also sheltering one another from the high winds. As these old-growth forests shrink, the viability of individual trees is put at peril. That ecological sensitivity makes redwoods less than ideal as a crop for commercial cultivation, but under responsible forest management, other trees can be grown and harvested for lumber with a minimal environmental impact.

In addition to certain trees, many grasses also thrive in a monoculture. One of these grasses is bamboo. Not only does it renew itself with ease (similar to your front yard after it's mown), and grow at record rates of several inches (even up to a couple feet) per day, but it also flourishes in the modern farmers' ideal setting: the monoculture. Hence it can be cultivated on a commercial scale with minimal unnatural assistance. As a lumber alternative, its rate of renewability outpaces most trees by about 10 or 20 to one. As a fiber alternative, it leaves cotton in the dust; conventional cotton, after all, is subjected to more heavy chemical crop dusting than any other plant on the planet.

So if you're concerned about sustainable agriculture, you need to be thinking about alternatives to unnatural monocropping. But if you're interested in agricultural efficiency, you may find the large scale of monoculture all too enticing. While something of a botanical phenomenon, bamboo cannot and should not replace replace every other source of lumber and fiber on the planet, but it certainly cannot be ignored. It must play a major role in the global polyculture of the future, as we struggle to meet the needs of a shrinking planet, a mushrooming population, and an overburdened environment.

Cotton gets under your skin

Cotton growers typically use many of the most hazardous pesticides on the market including aldicarb, phorate, methamidophos and endosulfan. Cotton pesticides are often broad spectrum organophosphates--pesticides originally developed as toxic nerve agents during World War II--and carbamate pesticides. (from the Pesticide Action Network)

Cotton: Blanketing the planet with pesticides

Of all insecticides used globally each year, the estimated amount used on traditional cotton: 25%. 

Five of the top nine pesticides used on cotton in the U.S. (cyanide, dicofol, naled, propargite, and trifluralin) are KNOWN cancer-causing chemicals. All nine are classified by the U.S. EPA as Category I and II— the most dangerous chemicals.

In the U.S. today, it takes approximately 8-10 years, and $100 million to develop a new pesticide for use on cotton. It takes approximately 5-6 years for weevils and other pests to develop an immunity to a new pesticide.

600,408 tons of herbicides, insecticides, fertilizers, fungicides, and other chemicals were used to produce  cotton in 1992 in the 6 largest cotton producing states. (Agricultural Chemical Usage, 1992 Field Crops Summary, USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service)

Number of pesticides presently on the market that were registered before being tested to determine if they caused cancer, birth defects or wildlife toxicity: 400.  (US EPA Pesticide Registration Progress Report, 1/93)

Amount of time it takes to ban a pesticide in the U.S. using present procedures: 10 years. (US EPA Pesticide Registration Progress Report, 1/93)

Number of active ingredients in pesticides found to cause cancer in animals or humans: 107.(After Silent Spring, NRDC, 6/93)

Of those active ingredients, the number still in use today: 83.(After Silent Spring, NRDC, 6/93)

Number of pesticides that are reproductive toxins according to the California E.P.A.: 15.  (After Silent Spring, NRDC, 6/93)

Most acutely toxic pesticide registered by the E.P.A.: aldicarb (frequently used on cotton). (After Silent Spring, NRDC, 6/93)

Number of states in which aldicarb has been detected in the groundwater: 16.  (After Silent Spring, NRDC, 6/93)

Percentage of all U.S. counties containing groundwater susceptible to contamination from agricultural pesticides and fertilizers: 46%. (After Silent Spring, NRDC, 6/93) 
The Sustainable Cotton Project estimates that the average acre of California cotton grown in 1995 received some 300 pounds of synthetic fertilizers or 1/3 pound of fertilizer to raise every pound of cotton. Synthetic fertilizers have been found to contaminate drinking wells in farm communities and pose other long-term threats to farm land.

One of the commonly used pesticides on cotton throughout the world, endosulfan, leached from cotton fields into a creek in Lawrence County, Alabama during heavy rains in 1995. Within days 245,000 fish were killed over 16 mile stretch. 142,000 pounds of endosulfan were used in California in 1994.

In California’s San Joaquin Valley, estimates are that less than 25% of a pesticide sprayed from a crop duster ever hits the crop. The remainder can drift for several miles, coming to rest on fruit and vegetable crops, and farm- workers. One year more than one hundred workers fell ill after a single incident of such drift onto an adjacent vineyard.

In California, it has become illegal to feed the leaves, stems, and short fibers of cotton known as ‘gin trash’ to livestock, because of the concentrated levels of pesticide residue. Instead, this gin trash is used to make furniture, mattresses, tampons, swabs, and cotton balls. The average American woman will use 11,000 tampons or sanitary pads during her lifetime.

The problems with clothing production don’t stop in the field. During the conversion of conventional cotton into clothing, numerous toxic chemicals are added at each stage— silicone waxes, harsh petroleum scours, softeners, heavy metals, flame and soil retardants, ammonia, and formaldehyde— to name just a few.

Bamboo: The Viable Alternative

(The following story was written by me and recently appeared in a number of local publications.)

Suddenly it seems like everybody’s talking about sustainability and renewable resources. And well they should. After 30 years of hot air about global warming and peak oil, the environment is finally talking a lead role in the American political drama. Solar energy is radiating across California and the nation, organic produce is spreading like pollen in the spring, and alternatives to disappearing hardwood and pesticide-rich cotton are drawing more interest than ever.

One remarkable resource that’s recently come out of the woodwork and into the spotlight is bamboo. A paragon of sustainability, bamboo is finding its way into construction, flooring, clothing, towels and linens. And unlike so many progressive alternatives, bamboo is absolutely affordable. It doesn’t require another 20 years of research or legislation, and it doesn’t demand a major initial investment to be recouped a decade from now. Bamboo is economically viable today.

Words like renewable and sustainable get thrown around a lot, and they’re likely to cause some misunderstanding. Even petroleum is a renewable resource; it just might take a few hundred thousand years to replenish itself. Redwood trees renew themselves much faster, in just a few centuries. As long as we don’t harvest them any faster than they grow, they could be considered sustainable. Further up on the scale, we have annual crops like hemp, which can grow up to 12 feet in a single season, with minimal crop rotation and little or no chemical fertilizers or pesticides. Easily maintained and renewed each year: that’s sustainable.

Then there’s bamboo. A division of the grass family, with as many as 2000 varieties, bamboo flourishes in virtually every climate. It is a notoriously vigorous grower; some varieties grow as much as 3 feet a day in the growing season — although a few inches a day is more typical. Bamboo reaches maturity within five years, and, as a grass, requires no replanting. Anyone who’s ever tried removing unwanted bamboo knows this characteristic all too well. When bamboo is cut down, it just comes right back, and stronger. If there’s a more readily renewable resource out there, I’d like to know about it.

The vast majority of commercial bamboo comes from China, Indonesia, and Southeast Asia. Indeed, they’ve been using the plant in that part of the world for both food and shelter for millennia. (They’ve even identified bamboo as having magical and mythical properties.) Countless varieties also thrive throughout Africa and the Americas, even in temperate and hardy climates.

Bamboo’s natural vigor makes it sustainable, plentiful, and inexpensive. And its physical strength and diversity translate directly into its versatility as a natural resource. In addition to all of its traditional uses for things like chopsticks and furniture, bamboo today is pressed and laminated as a superior lumber alternative. Stronger even than oak or maple, bamboo has become the first choice in flooring. And in the past couple years, its price has come to rival that of traditional hardwood. This pressed bamboo is also becoming wildly popular for cutting boards and kitchenware because of the way it resists scratching and repels moisture.

Bamboo fiber clothing and fabrics, however, may hold the plant’s greatest promise. Until you’ve seen it yourself, the touch of bamboo is hard to imagine, and difficult to believe. Beat into a pulp and spun into thread, bamboo fiber yields an amazingly soft, anti-bacterial and anti-microbial material. Remarkably soft and absorbent bamboo towels are simply exquisite. And, unlike conventional cotton, bamboo grows prolifically without fertilizers, pesticides or defoliants.

In the quest for a global panacea, bamboo might not necessarily save the planet; but in terms of renewability and sustainability, it’s certainly one of the most promising natural resources we have. And not just promising — bamboo is available today, and affordable. No longer must one pay a premium to support a cause or to make an environmental statement. At last, you can do what’s right for the earth, what’s right for yourself, and what’s right for your budget.